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It's pretty impressive when in season you have brought up only a couple guys from a loaded farm system, one for less than 2 months, the other for only a few weeks.

They will still lose more than 90 games, but it's an surprisingly quick start to a turnaround. If next year they built a 75-80 win team entirely out of their farm system, it would be amazing. They need 2 things to turn it around completely. Determine who their best contributors will be, and win back enough fans so they can increase payroll to fill in everywhere else.

Still a few years to go, but no longer being the absolute bottom of the league is a good start.

1. I just noted he leads the league in Ks despite playing only about 2 monhts. That's a lot of strikeouts.

2. I've been pointing out the problems with high-K hitters for a decade. Other than the fact you folks are sick of it, why should I stop for the Astros?

2a. To wit, Springer is currently hitting 386/862 on-contact. That's not sustainable. If he doesn't get the Ks under control, there's no way he can maintain a 125 OPS+ over an extended period and certainly no way he can improve on it.

2b. To see what that might look like, check Singleton. Similar K-rate and he's hitting 333/750 on-contact ... that's a bit low on the BA side but a very impressive SLG ... and he's got a 91 OPS+.

3. I think I'm perfectly even-handed with the Astros. When I think teams have major flaws I point them out. When I think they are a bad team, I point that out. When I think the opposite, I point that out. I'm interested in them at the moment for the same reason everybody else is. I'm just one of the ones who think disaster capitalism is not a very good model.

They will still lose more than 90 games, but it's an surprisingly quick start to a turnaround.

Quick start? The Astros have been putrid for four seasons now. The Crane/Luhnow regime is in Season 3, and every decent homegrown player on the roster was inherited from McLane/Wade. This is likely to remain true into Season 4, if not Season 5 (see below).

If next year they built a 75-80 win team entirely out of their farm system, it would be amazing.

Amazing, indeed, when you consider that the only two players the Astros are likely to graduate to the ML between now and late 2015 are Domingo Santana and Mike Foltyniewicz, who sure as hell aren't going to add ~12 to ~15 wins to the 2015 Astros.

The more this front office tries to convince everyone how brilliant they are — and make no mistake: that's the point of all these stories — the more I think it's all a sham. Some of the double-speak in this and other recent articles is laughable. If not spoken by some favorites of the saber crowd, this front office would be getting creamed online.

every guy on that roster is from ed wade/whatshisname. the new Geek Room has quickly dumped every guy they could who they didn't like and lots of them have gone on to other teams and done at least decently, even the low paid ones.

and bud norris is dead right. good players didn't want to go to houston when the team was great, and they sure as heck don't want to go there now, unless they got nowheres else to go. the pretense that mclane lost money goes as gospel without a sound of protest. the mouths of FO and press pretend that it is a beautiful thing that the payroll is low, pretending that that (swear words) crane is putting it in a savings account to spend for The Last Piece Of The Puzzle. he is paying pennies for altuve, one of the best players in the DH league. if singleton manages to be even league average, which, so far he is not, and is not EVEN brett wallace, he'll be the most underpaid player in the league until he is old ( 10 mill for 8 years - really)

santana and foltynieciwc are ed wade's picks.

the astros LIKE players with high K rates (see the suckulous chris carter) - which means outs without GIDP, even though the players aren't exactly low on GIDP, and line drive rate. look how many guys on that team don't have even league average BA - or BA over .200. Yeah, i know - the WARs and all the other complicated formula numbers you need to be a Math Person to understand how they got them. which is clever, because then hardly anyone can argue about them or critique them

i think that lots of fans don't like the idea that players get paid, let alone ever get paid what they are worth - see all the people who are so in love with the NCAA not paying its "student" athletes ANYTHING and depriving them of even legal representation, so they can pretend that they players are "pure" and untouched by greed or money, the last of the true "amateurs" who play only for The Glory of Their Skool and have no interest in fame or that filthy filthy money.

- and the astros FO cashes in on that, with all the cheapo young players and the signing of FA like carlos pena - and then "blowing" 1/4 of the budget on feldman, who we ALL know is gonna be trade bait if he doesn't get hurt or suck next year.

they have even stopped pretending that they are "concerned" that 3/4 of the astros "territory" especially harris county, can't see their stupid tv channel, seeing as how they sell plenty of corporate tix, and don't mind the empty seats. attendance is usually about half of the reported attendance.

and somehow, the media - even the NATIONAL media, is uninterested in reporting what the astros actually take IN and how much PROFIT the owner rakes in every year. i know the chronicle is heavily invested in the astros, so who expects honesty from them. but espn doesn't recognize the existence of houston as a place on earth, let alone a team, and the other national reporters have zero interest in digging for the truth.

everything is rumors, twitting the gossip, and who spins things the best.

it is amazing how things have gone 180 from the time moneyball got pub. back then, it was all about how those icky nerdz who can't even CATCH a ball were trying to ruin The Game with their google boy using intarwebs
- 10 years later, it is exactly the opposite. those Geek Room Guys are gonna produce majick with their formulas, not insulting The Scouts this time, and produce endless cheap players who now are supposed to Go All The Way in 3 years. And everyone claps.

sigh

the players union has the strength of wet toilet paper, and has turned into the usual oligarchy that has interest only in the 1 percenters who get the vast majority of what money the players get. and the % the players get is lower every single year.

being a blackjack dealer is the best way to understanding gambling, which is what picking ballplayers really is, right? you don't need to know which direction the wind is blowing. or east from west

besides
shtt don't happen. guys don't get hurt or not be able to duplicate ML results from one year to the next, or just suck when they were supposed to ROOL.

look at the nats and how they wisely held back on strasburg and didn't let him pitch in sept oct so as they could keep his arm like the numbers people all said because it was a given that they would win year after year after year now that they had The Yopung Core in place and The Final Pieces Of The Puzzle, too

Quick start? The Astros have been putrid for four seasons now. The Crane/Luhnow regime is in Season 3, and every decent homegrown player on the roster was inherited from McLane/Wade. This is likely to remain true into Season 4, if not Season 5 (see below).

Amazing, indeed, when you consider that the only two players the Astros are likely to graduate to the ML between now and late 2015 are Domingo Santana and Mike Foltyniewicz, who sure as hell aren't going to add ~12 to ~15 wins to the 2015 Astros.

3 seasons, they are a decent team now.. And what's your point about Wade? Should Luhnow have dumped the previous regimes draftees and started over? You make my points for me, Luhnow was handed had a great start in rebuilding a once awful farm system, and did the right thing by "doubling down" on rebuilding through the farm by adding a ton of depth to it through trades.

12-15 wins? They are on a 70 win pace this season with Singlton/Springer missing much of season.

With Singleton at first, the average age of their starting position players is a smidge under 25 years, they have 6 starters 24 years old or younger! Their most talented starters are 23 and 22 years old. It's very reasonable to expect significant improvement from this group, in all phases of the game, not just K rates.

The core of the rotation is 26 years old outside of Feldman, with Funkywitz/Appel destined to join it in next few years.

And LOL expecting them to only graduate 2 more players from the farm system in the next 12 months. The joy of a deep system is how often it produces pleasant surprises.

look at the nats and how they wisely held back on strasburg and didn't let him pitch in sept oct so as they could keep his arm like the numbers people all said because it was a given that they would win year after year after year now that they had The Yopung Core in place and The Final Pieces Of The Puzzle, too

Seems like a lot of people on this thread want to stand on 16 vs the dealers face card.

If you have to be results oriented, then you have to know the Nats go no farther in playoffs pitching Strasburg. If you aren't results oriented, you realize the answer is quite a bit more complicated.

Yes, there is variance in player results. But trusting your forecasts is a lot smarter than winging it.

- and the astros FO cashes in on that, with all the cheapo young players and the signing of FA like carlos pena - and then "blowing" 1/4 of the budget on feldman, who we ALL know is gonna be trade bait if he doesn't get hurt or suck next year.

You hope he's trade bait. When the Astros start making playoff runs in a couple years, your rotation will be full of studs in their Twenties and Feldman will be in his mid thirties. Why wouldn't you want to get value for him before then to ensure those teams are even better?

they have even stopped pretending that they are "concerned" that 3/4 of the astros "territory" especially harris county, can't see their stupid tv channel, seeing as how they sell plenty of corporate tix, and don't mind the empty seats. attendance is usually about half of the reported attendance.

Now they have a product worth watching makes this now their biggest problem. But now they have a product worth watching also gives them the solution to this problem.

Also, if you don't want to give Luhnow credit for any success the Astros have or will have and prefer to credit his predecessors, then you also shouldn't give Friedman much credit for turning Tampa Bay around. Upton, Crawford, Shields, Baldelli, Hellikson, Scott, Davis, Jaso, Gomes, Hammel, etc, etc, the list of useful Tampa Ray farm products drafted before Friedman arrived is very long.

Luhnow is not at all afraid of taking chances and looking foolish in the process. He seems to be guided by the Bill James observation about shitty teams remaining shitty because they try to do the same things everybody else does, only without the resources. Players will always whine about this, which just goes to show how much people love their institutionalized bureaucracies, even in an industry where recognition, especially compensation, is so clearly driven by individual talent and hard work.

can't see how on earth you think this is an exciting team. only 3 guys have a WAR over zero. only 3 guys have an OPS+ over 100 and 3 regulars have a BA below mendoza. the only really good player is altuve. springer strikes out over 1/3 of ABs, but at least he has learned to play RF and has managed to comepnsate for the endless Ks with 15 home runs. fowler is ok. the rest are guys who would have been booed off the field just 6 years ago. young is not the same as exciting. 70 wins?

well, i never say impossible because it is baseball and youneverknow, but this is a terrible team/

luhnow has dumped as many of ed wade's guys and ALL pre-wade guys, as he dared to. the only one he has not, that i don't get, is jonathan villar, who is just horrible with bat and glove and i have no idea why on earth he's on a ML team.

i don't play poker. but i do know this - in baseball, there really is a part of being a winning team that is just flat out luck that is not there with something like poker which is just numbers. and i know that just because you got a good young team one year doesn't mean that you'll have the same good team the next year (see the 02 to 03 angels)

so if you got a chance NOW to get to the playoffs, you don't shrug it off and say - next year is another year. because too many times tomorrow never comes. which it has not for the nats, and it sure does not look like it's coming around again, at least for a while

I don't think he's taking big chances - you're not finding a Mike Trout or Clayton Kershaw with this kind of tinkering, and those are the bets that matter. This is Michael Lewis's book all over again, spending chapters on Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteberg, and ignoring Miguel Tejada and Tim Hudson. But don't kid yourself about the resistance to dinky little things like tandem starters or defensive shifts (OK, maybe by now that is water under the bridge) or unique coverage arrangements for scouting. People will piss and moan about changes to their jobs, and many of them have access to sportswriters.

She decided that she'd hate the Astros, and she's hating the Astros. Sad to watch, but there it is.

- i said, in very easy to understand words, that at the end of the 2012 season, the astros and i were through. that the divorce was very bitter, filled with a great deal of hate and resentment. i said all the reasons why. i also said that my decision was final, that absolutely nothing whatsoever could change my mind or my attitude. you ignored it, didn't listen, laughed it off - it's just the usual women talk and who can believe anything Those Creatures say, right?

parody? help your self.

about the team - about modern baseball - i understand that it is all, it is ONLY about more money for the already filthy rich. there is no interest whatsoever in anything else, except the spinning about why it is wonderful for the owners to not want to pay Those Greedy Players and/or various excuses why they shouldn't spend their profits on the team. this is the way of the world, unless religion is involved. but the only religion here is mo money. i know this is the way things are, but i don't have to LIKE it. or IGNORE it. or pretend things are different.

so anyhow, if you guys want to believe that the astros are this great team destined for the WS with the marvelous hoes, singleton, dominguez and the rest of the 0.1 - 0.6 WAR STAHS!!! they got out there, knock yourselves out. after all, gotta root for the guys who know that picking ballplayers is like being a poker dealer and knowing that in the end, the house always wins.

you want to believe the owner put all those profits in a savings account to pay for players in that magical future, with all those can't fail perfect STAH!!! prospects the astros are so neck deep in, knock your self out. that will happen about the same time some man respects some hookup in the morning.